Retired City of Pontiac employee Billie Swazer speaks out during the Pontiac General Employees Retirement System meeting at Pontiac City Hall. Wednesday, February 27, 2012. The Oakland Press/TIM THOMPSON

After being reinstated by a judge's order, Pontiac's largest pension board is looking for new digs as the city moves to evict the retirement system from City Hall.

"We kick it (down the road) for 30 more days, and that's it," Chairman Charlie Harrison III said at Wednesday's meeting of the Pontiac General Employees Retirement System.

A pension board committee found an office for the retirement system in Auburn Hills, but the board voted to further investigate the cost of leasing the office, as well as to ask Emergency Financial Manager Lou Schimmel if other space is available in City Hall and to make a final decision on the retirement system's future home at the board's March 27 meeting.

"I really think we should spend a little extra time and see if we can't keep the space in the City of Pontiac somewhere," said pension board trustee and former Mayor Walter Moore.

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"I can't see myself voting for this without being assured we've explored all our options," Moore said of the Auburn Hills office.

Pension board trustee and former City Councilman Koné Bowman said offices that were looked at in Pontiac were not suitable due to issues such as lack of parking and other accessibility issues.

Schimmel said Thursday that he's not open to the idea of the retirement system moving to a different space in City Hall.

"All their conversation about the space is nonsense, because they ought to go right off to BeneSys like the Police and Fire Retirement System, and then we wouldn't be having this conversation at all," the emergency financial manager said.

BeneSys is a third-party financial management service company located in Troy.

"That is the financially smartest thing to do and the administratively smartest thing to do. So, I'm not interested in talking about space in City Hall or out of City Hall. We need no space."

The administration of the Police and Fire Retirement System, the pension fund for retired police and firefighters, moved to BeneSys, Inc. in January.

City Finance Director John Naglick, a trustee for both pension funds by virtue of his position, has said that outsourcing the General Employees Retirement System's administration to BeneSys, Inc. would result in an estimated cost savings of $231,000 over the term of the contract.

The city's eviction proceeding against the retirement system has been set for an April 23 bench trial before 51st District Court Judge Richard Kuhn in Waterford.

In December, Schimmel cut the number of trustees on the pension board from 11 to five, a move that drew a lawsuit from a group of retired city employees.

At Wednesday's meeting, the pension board voted 7-2 to table the minutes from the only meeting of the smaller board created by Schimmel's ordinance, which took place on Dec. 14.

At that meeting, the smaller board passed new trustee travel and ethics policies and voted to study ways of using the pension's surplus to pay for retiree health care.

Mayor Leon Jukowski and Naglick voted "no" on Wednesday's motion.

"This is a preliminary injunction, which means there is litigation to follow," Jukowski said of Chabot's order.

"As a technicality, I don't believe that this order says (Chabot's) order says that whatever the five-person board did was null and void," the mayor said. "I think it is incorrect to say that this order says what happened in December is null and void, from a legal standpoint."

Tony Asher, the chief executive officer of the pension board's law firm, Sullivan, Ward, Asher & Patton, P.C., said: "What's before this board is the actions of another board. It's not appropriate for this board to act on those motions."

Pension board Chairman Harrison said the issue will be decided in a courtroom and not at City Hall.

"Ultimately, a judge is going to decide this," he said.

"It won't make a difference at the end of the day if what we do is not in accordance (with) what the judge decides."

The 11-person board has voted against studying the use of the pension fund's surplus funding to pay for retiree health care in the past.

The city's annual projected structural deficit of $6 million annually is equal to its unfunded yearly retiree health care obligation.

The pension fund has about $435 million in assets as of Jan. 16, is approximately 153.5 percent funded and serves about 1,100 retirees.

"You don't find plans out there as well-funded as you are," said Laurence Gray, the pension fund's investment adviser, during a presentation Wednesday.